Participants Talk Research Articles

When words feel right: How affective expressions of listeners change a speaker's language use

AbstractBased on conversation research and work showing that affective cues help to tune information processing to situational demands, it was hypothesized that affective expressions of listeners would influence how speakers represent communicated information in language. Participants were asked to orally communicate an event presented in a film clip to two other participants. These other participants were actually confederates who either adopted a positive or negative nonverbal expression during the story of the participant. Results show that participants talking to smiling listeners used more interpretive, abstract language, whereas participants talking to frowning listeners stayed with the concrete and descriptive facts. These effects of external affective cues on language abstraction were not mediated by the speaker's mood. Implications for interpersonal conversation are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Indexicality and experience: Exploring the meanings of /aw/‐monophthongization in Pittsburgh1

In this paper we test the hypothesis that monophthongal /aw/ is semiotically associated with local identity in Pittsburgh. We compare results of an experimental task that directly elicits participants' sense of the indexical value of /aw/‐monophthongization with the occurrence of this variant in the same people's speech. People who hear monophthongal /aw/ as an index of localness areunlikelyto have this feature in their own speech, and many of the people whodomonophthongize /aw/ do not associate this variant with localness. Exploring how four of these participants talk about this feature and its meanings, we show that the indexical meanings of speech features can vary widely within a community, and we illustrate the danger of confusing the meaning assigned by hearers to a linguistic form with the meaning users would assign to it. We suggest that a phenomenological approach, attending to the multiplicity and indeterminacy of indexical relations and to how such relations arise historically and in lived experience, can lead to a more nuanced account of the distribution of social meanings of variant forms than can studies of perception or production alone.

Talking Ourselves UP

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of talk and its place within kaupapa Māori research. Just as many Māori occasions rely on talk1 to define context and kaupapa, so do research and principles often seek to represent the talk of participants as defining their context and their kaupapa. Within these research processes there are ample opportunities for participants to be both marginalised and/or (re)victimised. The care taken within what has become a popular way of gathering research data, talking to people, rests on a researcher's skills as an interviewer as well as their intrinsic interest in people. This paper therefore examines some of the issues both researchers and participants need to be aware of, with a particular focus on qualitative research that is conducted within a kaupapa Māori framework.

Talk, Research Technology, and the Achievement of Human Subject “Status Passage”

This article draws on field notes and interviews collected during an ethnographic study of the informed-consent process in HIV/AIDS clinical trials to examine the movement of individuals from the status designation of patient to that of human subject of research. Its theoretical starting points are Glaser and Strauss's (1971) observation of the centrality of interaction to status passage and their conceptualization of status passage as social accomplishment. Insights from conversation and technology studies are applied to show that human subject status passage is facilitated through (1) the enlistment efforts of research professionals and patients, (2) the talk of participants on informed consent and protocol-related matters, and (3) the placement of signatures on informed-consent documents. The analysis reveals that human subject status passage is indeterminate, negotiated, and unmarked by ceremony and cultural symbols. The implications of these findings for future studies on status passage and informed consent in human research are considered.

Aspects of the sequential organization of mobile phone conversation

This article presents an investigation of the organization and structures of talk-in-interaction over mobile phone. The analysis is based upon naturally occurring data consisting of a corpus of calls recorded during everyday activities of a young adult. Using these data we reveal a range of sequential phenomena associated with mobile phone usage. Established conversation analytic work on landline telephone conversation is used in order to build a comparative analysis of how actions such as openings, caller–called identity management, and topic introduction are accomplished in mobile vs landline telephone conversation. We first show that, far from revolutionizing the organization of telephone conversation, mobile phone talk retains many of the norms associated with landline phone talk. Subsequently, focusing on those modifications that are identifiable in our data, we show how these are related to aspects of the communicative affordances of mobile phones, orientations to which are observable in the talk of participants in mobile phone conversation.

Syntactic and Prosodic Practices for Cohesion in Series of Three-Part Sequences in Classroom Talk

Starting from the perspective that social order is locally coconstructed through talk-in-interaction, in this article, I investigate sequential, syntactic, and prosodic practices as locally instantiated interactive resources in the coconstruction of cohesive series of consecutive 3-part sequences of talk. Methods for analysis are drawn from conversation analysis and acoustic phonetics to present a holistic account of syntactic, prosodic, and written resources-a grammar of interaction (Ochs, Schegloff, & Thompson, 1996)-in the talk of participants in high school classrooms. This coordination of resources results in interactionally defined segments of activity.

Projecting Threat: Managing Subjective Investments in Whiteness

In this paper, we focus on the ways in which subjective investments in whiteness work to construct Indigenous people as threats to the white Australian nation. In order to better understand such subjective investments, we employ an approach to analysing talk that draws upon both psychoanalysis and discursive psychology. We suggest that this combination may allow for a thoroughly social understanding of the practices of exclusion within Australia. Through an analysis of white participants talk surrounding Indigenous land claims, we demonstrate the “anxieties of whiteness” that structure the hegemonic intelligible subject positions available to white Australians, particularly within the current political climate. Our aim in paying close attention to the ways in which projections of threat are achieved within everyday talk is to make visible the systems of representation that maintain the hegemony of whiteness in Australia.

Resistances of Gender

Resistances of Gender

Co-housing for Seniors Experienced as an Occupational Generative Environment

This qualitative study aimed to identify and explore how well elderly people living in co-housing for seniors experience their occupational choices and occupational performance from a health-promotion and diseaseprevention perspective. A semi-structured discussion guideline with three main topics - occupational environment , occupational performance and occupational choices was the basis for three focus-group interviews, each with 6 participants. The analysis was performed by using a modified qualitative meaning considering approach. Member checks were done with the original focus groups before the final step in analysis. The findings demonstrated that participants experience themselves as living in an environment which is generative for their occupational choices and performance. Participants talk about their experiences as a result of an interaction between the physical and social environment. They put especially strong emphasis on their social networks. Being in control and deciding for oneself is important, valued and is something they protect individually and in fellowship. In general, participants experience their performance and choices in terms of feeling free and having reserves of energy. Some of the participants point out limitations in choices and performance in relation to either their physical or their social environment.

Noises in the attic: The legacy of expectations in the academy

This process-video on the topic of graduate students and junior faculty of color in higher education represents musings around the issues that are involved in racism and the assumptions that are a part of that ideology. Using the lens of Critical Race Theory as described by Bell (1987), the conversations that took place in a video-recording studio were analyzed for themes that represent the experience of being "the fly in the milk," at a White academic institution. "How do we talk to whiteness?" is the central theme that organizes this discussion of the videotape "Noises in the Attic: Conversations with Ourselves. "The participants talk about alienation, as described in sections called "Noises," "The White Man's Scrapbook," "Between and Betwixt," and "Filling in the?" A realization that there is a need to understand that White people operate from a different perspective than nonwhite people rounds off the discussion of being a noise in the attic of the White academic environment.

Humanitarian Intervention and Just War

Humanitarian intervention is one of the primary international security problems of today. As an object analysis, it sits at the intersection of the realist and idealist traditions in the study of international relations. Despite its high profile, debate on humanitarian intervention is unsatisfactory; participants talk past one another and most discussion is devoid of ethical concepts. In particular, there is a striking absence of explicit reference to the Just War tradition. Only scholars of international law have explicitly and systematically examined normative issues, but their focus seems too narrow. The result is a series of what appear to be arbitrary judgments about when humanitarian intervention is justified combined with an often fundamental misunderstanding of the international system. This essay presents a sketch of the Just War tradition's main concepts and argues that it is both possible and advantageous to resort to them in discussing and evaluating humanitarian intervention. The article then applies these concepts to the recent debate on humanitarian intervention and shows that almost all of the concerns raised in this scholarship fit within the Just War framework. The essay focuses on the criteria from the Just War tradition that deal with when to resort to the use of armed force.

How the participants talk about “participation” in Mid-Atlantic fisheries management

The present paper asks how participants in the management discourse refer to industry participation. The analysis is based on 173 documents including interviews with participants, transcripts of the meetings of management agencies, articles, letters, memos, and postings on a recreational fisheries Internet chat room. Six groups of interpretations are suggested. “Working Together” draws on the idea that participation means pulling together to make management work. “Source of Accountability” means that because of participation people must be ready to explain their actions. “Mobilization” consists of the ways people talk about participation as mobilizing people who share their management goals. “Distrust” suggests that participation is a source of obstruction to the management process or, conversely, it is the co-optation of the industry by the management system. “Proper Process” suggests that participation should involve open communications or, conversely, that participation comes through proper channels. Finally, “Representation” suggests that participation should mean that the “will of the majority” prevails or, conversely, participation is the activity of those who have established credible claims to speak on behalf of interest groups. The paper outlines each of these categories in detail and provides illustrations. It concludes with a discussion of the relationship between participation and legitimacy.

The `Northridge Earthquake' Conversations: Conversational Patterns in Japanese and Thai and their Cultural Significance

Cultural patterns and norms are revealed not only through what participants talk about but also through how they construct their talk. Comparing the behavior of Japanese and Thai interactants using the analytical concept of `floor', this article attempts to elucidate their respective cultural norms. While Japanese exhibit many features of the `collaboration' speech style, Thais show abundant features of the `self-assertive' style. These styles are a realization of their respective cultural norms: `mutual dependency' for Japanese and `independence' for Thai. In this study, observations frequently made by anthropologists about these cultures are compared and supported with empirical data. The database consists of four conversations in Japanese and four conversations in Thai. The pair in each conversation are two strangers who experienced the same earthquake in Los Angeles. Interlocutors, though strangers to each other, were similar in age and student status, and share the same language. The topic provided (the earthquake) was identical for all conversational pairs and was relevant to the participants' lives after the major disaster. Thus our database provides an ideal site for a meaningful crosscultural study. Being strangers, the participants cannot rely on their personally shared knowledge, and thus depend on their shared cultural common ground more heavily. The norms elucidated from conversational patterns can thus be confirmed as norms more generally held by all members of the respective cultural groups.

Beyond Confused Noise: Ideas Toward Communicative Procedural Justice

In this article, I discuss local planning decision making as a form of public policy making undertaken by the state and involving some degree of public participation. I am interested in communlcative action as a normative basis for participatory decision making of public policy matters. Empirically, however, differences of discourses have led to participants talking past each other rather than negotiating with each other. Using a case study from Perth, Western Australia, I demonstrate the idea of procedural justice and examine the reasons for participants' dissatisfaction with public participation processes. I then develop some tentative principles for a more procedurally just communicative planning practice.

Turn-competitive incomings

Abstract A recurrent feature of multi-party conversation is that one speaker comes in prior to the completion of another's turn and can be heard as directly competing with the other for possession of the turn. That is, the incomer can be heard as wanting the floor to himself not when the current speaker has finished but now, at this point in the conversation. Our analysis reveals that in managing talk of this kind participants, methodically produce and monitor for certain prosodic features of speech. These features, which have hitherto received scant attention in analyses of interaction, involve pitch-height, tempo and loudness variations. By deploying these prosodic features participants can constitute their incomings as competitive for the turn irrespective of the lexico-syntactic or illocutionary characteristics of their talk.